Social media changed the business landscape forever – and it’s not going away anytime soon. By now, most small businesses know that social media marketing is a critical component of a successful digital marketing strategy. However, it’s often hard to know how – and where – to start.
Why Should Brands Use Social Media?
Social media helps brands build communities around their products, foster relationships with consumers, and extend customer lifetime value. It allows brands to display a more relatable, more human side. Posting on social media gives brands an opportunity to swiftly react to global events and address controversy.
Social media is free
Social media is a free (or low cost), fun, and highly effective way to raise brand awareness, drive traffic, and increase sales. However, social media marketing requires patience and a careful strategy. It’s crucial to create native platform content that engages well on its own to avoid wasting ad-spend on campaigns with low conversion rates.
Built-in Audiences Increase Organic Reach
People turn to social media to keep up with friends, relax, learn the latest news, find inspiration, and discover new ideas. Brands excel when they can contribute to viral trends, answer consumer questions, and entertain users. Blog posts alone won’t do it – you need to drive organic traffic to your pages in a multi-pronged approach that includes a strong social media strategy.
Best Social Media Platforms For Brands
Facebook is the platform that often comes to mind when people think of social media marketing. It pioneered many of the social media practices we see today: boosted posts, PPC social media ads, algorithmic newsfeeds. Facebook’s strength is in small communities hosted via Groups.
Largest Audience: Facebook has a fairly even demographic spread. It’s dominated by Millenials and Gen Z, but it’s the largest network of young people and seniors as well.
YouTube
YouTube is known as a home for entertainment, education, and much more. It features both short-form and long-form video content (both horizontal and vertical) and is even diversifying into static text and image content feeds.
People spend over a billion hours watching YouTube content every day. YouTube is not only the second-largest social media platform in the world, but it’s also the second-largest search engine. Also, since Google (the world’s largest search engine) owns YouTube, content that ranks well on YouTube ranks well on Google.
Largest Audience: YouTube is popular among all ages, with only a small margin of difference between each age group
Instagram started as a home for high-quality visual content. It’s pivoted over the years into a mobile-first social network for photos and video –– especially short form and live vertical video content.
Largest Audience: Millennials and Gen Z
TikTok
TikTok shook up the social media landscape with short-form vertical video, initially focused on dancing and lip-syncing. Now, it has matured into a place users turn to for both entertainment and education.
Largest Audience: Gen Z
Twitter introduced short-form, snappy social posts. It’s known for speed –=– for better or for worse, content goes viral quickly on Twitter. The strongest Twitter content is either entertaining, thought-provoking, or both.
Largest Audience: Millennial Men
LinkedIn originated as “the social media for work,” but it has expanded into a home for an array of content, though it still maintains a professional atmosphere. It’s a place where people network with other professionals, learn new skills, and find new jobs. The best LinkedIn content teaches or inspires.
Largest Audience: Millennial Men
Pinterest is a visual search engine that users turn to in search of entertainment, education, and inspiration. Users can create pins and save other user-created pins to themed boards, like digital bulletin boards. While Pinterest has a predominantly young, female audience, it is rapidly attracting more males and older users.
Largest Audience: Millennial Women
Social Selling Tips for Brands
Know Your Target Audience – And Where To Find Them
Each platform has its own audience, content style, lingo, ideal type of content, and best practices. Take the time to study each social media platform before developing your digital marketing strategy. For example, Facebook and LinkedIn skew older, while Instagram and TikTok skew younger. Twitter is more favored by men, while mostly women use Pinterest.
However, finding and connecting with your audience goes deeper than age and gender metrics. It’s essential to study communities on different platforms to see what social media content and topics perform the best on each platform.
Use Landing Pages Instead of Home Pages
When creating social content, it’s easy to link to your website’s home page by default. However, it’s a much better practice to link to targeted landing pages. If potential customers are clicking through your fantastic CTA on a social media post, you don’t want them to get distracted by content on your homepage.
Work With Micro-Influencers
Many social media users make major consumption decisions based on influencer content and recommendations. And major influencers can demand six and seven-figure prices for just one Instagram post.
While receiving a brand endorsement from Dwayne Johnson or Kim Kardashian is beyond the reach of the average small business, micro-influencers provide a powerful marketing opportunity for innovative brands. Stack Influence is a platform that connects brands to micro-influencers across a wide array of niches, including beauty, fitness, food, tech, wellness, fashion, and more.
Use Every Tool Available
Each platform provides several tools to improve the discoverability, engagement, and conversion rates of your content.
- Hashtags –– use hashtags to connect your content into targeted feeds, like #MomPrenuer, #FolkMusic, #HealthyLiving, and nearly anything else you can think of. While it can be fun to create your own hashtags, it’s a better idea to use hashtags that already have lots of followers. Be sure to use camel case in your hashtags. This is the best way to make your posts accessible to all users.
- Location –– small local businesses should tag their location in their posts as much as possible to draw local traffic.
- Stickers –– interactive stickers invite users to engage directly with your content through polls, interviews, and more. Use stickers wisely to forge deeper relationships with your followers.
- Live –– live video content is one of the best ways to inject authenticity into a tightly curated feed. People buy from people, so showing your smiling face is one of the best ways to connect with your customers.
- Analytics –– social media platforms are known for powerful analytics. Check your stats often as a way to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing.
- Direct Messages –– Customers commonly turn to social media as a first resort for customer service. Use Direct Messages as a way to answer questions and generate leads through conversations.
- Groups –– Small, focused communities are goldmines for information, but you can’t just promote your product. You need to engage with the community and play by their rules.
Accelerate Your Cash Flow For Fast Growth
A superb social media campaign can drive tons of traffic to your website and lead to many sales. However, if you don’t have enough stock to meet demand, you can find yourself in a tight position. Avoid the headaches by securing your cash flow in advance.
Instant Access from Payability provides accelerated payouts for online sellers – which means no more wait times for funds from sales!
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- Cash Back –– Earn up to 2% cash back on purchases with the Payability Seller Card.
Instant Advance from Payability provides instant capital for brands that are ready to scale.
- Quick Approval –– Don’t wait for a credit check. Instead, apply online with your marketplace account and get funds as soon as a day later.
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- Cash Back –– Use the Payability Seller Card to earn up to 2% cash back on purchases.
